Closed captioning is typically used to provide a textual representation of spoken audio in content. For example, closed captioning may be displayed on a display device to help the hearing impaired consume content, such as to watch a television program. Closed captioning is considered “closed” due to the ability to display the closed captioning when desired, whereas “open” captions are incorporated and displayed as a permanent part of the content.
Traditional closed captioning was provided as a part of the content itself, such as through inclusion in a video blanking interval (VBI). To cause output of the traditional closed captioning, the user was given an option of whether to display the closed captioning data available from the VBI. This option was then applied to each of the channels viewed by the user. However, techniques were subsequently developed to provide a variety of closed captioning options. Therefore, these techniques also included a feature to let a user choose particular closed captioning (e.g., in a particular language) for output from the variety of closed captions. However, these traditional techniques limited output to the particular closed caption. Therefore, if this closed captioning chosen was not available, a closed caption was not output, regardless of the availability of other closed captions.